


Firecracker

by twistedmiracle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Complete, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:47:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedmiracle/pseuds/twistedmiracle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Title: </b> Firecracker<br/><b>Author: </b> twistedm<br/><b>Rating: </b> NC-17 for nudity, realism and the spilled vodka.<br/><b>Word Count: </b> ~4250<br/><b>Your challenge is for: </b> enchanted_jae<br/><b>Keywords: </b> red, white, blue<br/><b>Dialogue: </b> "I hear you're a firecracker in bed."<br/><b>Summary: </b> Draco is cool, Hermione is hardheaded and Harry is miserable.<br/><b>Beta Acknowledgement: </b> pushdragon and 13_Moons.<br/><b>Author's Note: </b>Jae, I suspect this is absolutely nothing like what you had in mind when you gave your sentence and three words. (I hope so, anyway! ;)<br/><b>Disclaimer: </b> They aren't mine, they belong to the clever Scottish lady. I just bend them and love them. Please don't smack me for playing. It isn't like I am going to earn any money from this!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firecracker

"I hearr you're a real firecrackerr in bed, Malfoy," Tavis slurred. He slumped into his chair, pointing down the long, narrow table. His ash blond hair appeared almost gray in the low light of the small pub. 

Malfoy's strategic pause gathered the unraveling attention of their nearby colleagues. He sat up straighter and raised one eyebrow before responding. "I'd blow your bollocks clean off should you try to find out, you mean." Then he took a long, slow pull from his dark pint. The rest of the Aurors laughed. Even Tavis, too drunk to hear it as anything but a friendly rebuff.

Even Harry smiled, hanging back in the farthest corner and barely drinking, as always. 

Malfoy's hair glowed nearly white in the pub's erratic lighting. Tenebrous and undersized, furnished with pockmarked wood, unhelpful help and little else, it was nonetheless the safest pub in magical London. Everyone knew it was the preferred after work hangout of all the junior Aurors and their Hogwarts friends. 

Harry hated it there. 

He went every night anyway. He always stayed till Draco Malfoy went home.

His only consolation was that - like Harry - Malfoy always left alone.

*

"Well then…."

"Leave it, Hermione," Harry grumbled. He cracked a last egg into the chipped, cobalt bowl and started to whisk them together with the milk and pepper. No one but Molly Weasley understood why he kept the old bowl, but he refused to throw it away. Had even removed it from the bin once.

Hermione ignored him and barreled onward. "If you don't want to go out with Cynthia, or Juliet, or Persimmon…"

"What freak names their daughter 'Persimmon'?" Harry muttered viciously, pouring the eggs into the hot pan.

"Then perhaps I could set you up with Tavis?"

Harry bowed his head over the stovetop and breathed in the mild scent of cooking eggs. It had taken her only four months longer than it had taken him. 

Stirring the hardening eggs, he addressed them as he spoke to her. "Figured it out then? Yes, I'm gay, but as I keep telling you, I don't need your help to find someone to date. The… man I want…." 

And there Harry stalled. _Doesn't want me? Doesn't want a man? Doesn't want anyone? Is someone you, Neville and Ron still loathe? Would sooner cut me than kiss me? Wouldn't jeopardize his slowly improving reputation by dating me?_ How the fuck did he finish the thought? He didn't presume to know the truth of Malfoy anymore. He lifted some of the cooking eggs from the pan with the spatula, turned them over and watched them cook some more.

When they were kids Harry thought he knew Malfoy inside and out, thought the boy easily summarized in a few words, a few ideas. He'd been wrong then, and now he only knew a longing so deep it frightened him, and a fear so complete it paralyzed him. When had he not wanted _something_ from Malfoy? And when had it gone anything but shockingly wrong? 

He finally knew better than to approach Malfoy for… anything. No way would Malfoy's pride allow anyone to imagine he was sleeping his way to the top. But that was a sure result for anyone on Harry's arm, anyone basking in the reflected light of Harry's annoyingly famous smile. Ever since the war, Malfoy had scrupulously avoided anything that could have been construed as morally ambiguous or even as a cut corner. Nothing good could come of this crush.

But he wasn't ready to force himself to move on yet.

Hermione laid a hand on Harry's shoulder. "I'll stop pushing."

"I appreciate that." He made one last stir through the eggs and picked up the pan to push half onto each cornflower blue plate. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to talk."

**

He should have known Hermione would never keep that promise.

"Hermione, please." Only two months later she was leaning over his chaotic desk where he sat alone, attempting to finish the sedimentary paperwork that had settled at the bottom of his workday. "I know why you're offering to come along tonight. You've never wanted to before." 

"I'm sure you think it's so I can _spy_ on you, or some such nonsense, but all I want is to spend time with the old gang." Her backlit hair made a halo of shining frizz. "I never see Padma and Parvati anymore. And I hear Lavender comes sometimes?"

Harry could only glare over his glasses.

"Oh for heaven's…" she tossed her hair behind her shoulder in frustration. "I'm over that. Ron and I broke up over a year ago. I'll be glad to see him too, as it happens." She clucked at him to finish and when he reluctantly stood, she linked a cheery arm through his and steered him toward the Floo. 

He hoped he could send her home early, foist her off on Ron or Parvati or even Tavis. Considered encouraging her to drink, maybe get tipsy.

But she sat with him in his usual spot under the broken lamp, with his usual eye line view of Malfoy. She ordered only butterbeer and he knew he could try, but he'd never hide it. Not for long. He was too far gone. 

After a full night of trying not to stare, a long night of trying not to clutch angrily at his pint when anyone flirted with Malfoy, a painful night when he tried not to be visible at all, Harry took her aside and stammered out a clatter of incoherent begging. Hermione got the point though. He didn't want her there. She would see who he wanted. He wasn't ready for her to get involved. 

She patted his shoulder, laughed and claimed she would stay out of his love life. But she kept coming to the pub. Two nights later he saw the shrewd look in her eyes when she came back from the loo and caught him gazing fiercely at Malfoy. He almost left the pub right then, but Malfoy caught his eye fleetingly and he sat down again. 

After a week Hermione made her excuses and started studying at night again. Harry should not have breathed easy.

***

When the shit finally hit the fan it could not have been worse. A month had passed since Hermione had stopped tagging along, and everything had apparently gone back to normal. Harry had even managed a few conversations with Malfoy: in the break room, as a briefing wrapped up, and one memorable night as they were leaving the pub.

The conversations were friendly, slightly remote, and bog standard, but that hadn't stopped Harry from remembering them for a week's worth of wanks. Each. 

Harry had seen Hermione peering at him occasionally in the Ministry, but he just waved at her to embarrass her into acting normally again. It always seemed to work, but he'd apparently been deluding himself. Because she'd taken matters into her own hands, and Harry was the one paying the price. 

He felt himself flush when Malfoy entered his office, even though he'd removed his outer robe an hour before. It was almost time to go, so he was alone. Barbara and Karlen were on night shift this month and not out of the briefing room yet, and ever since Tillon's wife had the baby, he'd made himself scarce as early as possible every afternoon. 

Malfoy looked stiff and uncomfortable, but he usually did. Harry smoothed down the front of his t-shirt halfway before he could stop himself. 

"I can't believe I thought you had changed, Potter." Malfoy's voice was wintry and painful. He stood like a rigid Trova in the doorway. Silver. Compelling. Almost human. 

"Er, explain?" Harry swallowed slowly.

Malfoy hadn't been slumping, but he stood a bit taller and took a step into the room. Harry saw the sheen of his robes, the twinkle of a tiny diamond in one ear, the watch almost hidden under a pristine cuff. "Sent your minion to do your dirty work again. To use me. Exploit me." 

Harry pushed back nervously, considering what Malfoy had said. Knowing he was at least a bit better with words than he'd once been, but still not as adept as he'd like. "Again, I need you to explain. I don't know what you mean."

Malfoy seemed to explode, and landed with hands on Harry's desk, his eyes sparking his agitation. "Bollocks! Utter bullshit! You sent your Granger to ask me for what you don't have the courtesy, the _courage_! Some Gryffindor you are! And I thought you'd changed! Thought you'd left your spoiled, your high and mighty ways! Thinking you're so much better than all the rest! Always lording it over the rest of us! Never understanding circumstances!"

Harry found one thing to hang on to in the messy rush of words. Leaving his hands where Malfoy could see them, he forced a calm he was nowhere near. "What did Hermione ask you for?" He wondered if the answer would help.

"Like you don't know!"

"Malfoy." 

Malfoy looked at him, wild grey eyes evocative of some sort of pale, noctural animal: dangerous. Torch cornered. 

"Just… pretend I really _don't_ know. Please?"

Malfoy blushed, and Harry caught himself reacting. Damn but he wanted to explore that flushed skin, catalogue every potential shade of pink. Only, why would he blush? Harry shifted nervously in his chair, wished he could be the one to comfort Malfoy, calm him down. Always doomed to want the damn near impossible. And sometimes he got it, but never with Malfoy.

"Malfoy? Please? What did she ask you for?"

Malfoy drew himself up and added dignity to his countenance like a scarf. Harry could see it there, but the rest of Malfoy's emotions were nonetheless visible still.

"My hair. Several strands of my hair."

Harry gaped, blank as the wall behind him. Malfoy paced away from Harry's desk and glared sideways, at the closed wooden door. "For Polyjuice, Potter. For you to take to a whore. Because you want to fuck my body but the rest of me is clearly quite out of the question."

Harry stood abruptly, knocking several items off his desk. He ignored the clatter and growled. "I am going to fucking strangle her. She promised to stay out of this! Malfoy, I, I never asked her to do anything like that." He hung his head in despair. This was unredeemable. The most disgusting mess. And for once, it was completely of Hermione's making. 

He spoke to his desk. "Merlin, Malfoy. I can't imagine what you must think of me, of my idiotic friend. But that's not, I didn't… shit!" He punched his desk, and yet another small breakable thing crashed to the floor. This one shattered audibly. He sat down and buried his red face in his arms. Knowing he'd be hard to hear this way, he tried talking anyway, wondering if there was any chance left even for a friendship, or a good collegial relationship.

"I'm gay. I figured it out a few months ago. By realizing I—" he took a deep breath, "—fancied another man. Which would be you. So I started going to the pub and watching you and wondering how on earth I could ever approach you as anything but, you know, another Auror. The boy you hated once. 

"Then Hermione figured it out. All of it. She promised, she _swore_ she'd stay out of it but I guess I wasn't moving fast enough for her or she disapproved or… I have never really figured out how her damn mind works."

A hand touched Harry's shoulder, and he jumped. He was mortified enough to consider leaving his face hidden but decided that even if he wasn't a Gryffindor anymore, surely Aurors were brave enough to face the man they wanted more than anyone.

Harry looked up, scared of what he might see. Fury? Pity? Forbearance? Amusement? But instead, there was a slight wrinkle to the forehead, a touch of wideness to the eyes. He sat up farther, and Malfoy's hand stayed on his shoulder.

"You're telling me, you've…" Malfoy swallowed and looked toward Harry's collar. 

Harry attempted a flip tone. "Yep. Interested. In you. The last thing you wanted, I'm sure. You probably don't even find men attractive. And certainly not—" 

Malfoy put a finger to Harry's lips and sat on the desk. Harry couldn't help closing his eyes for a heartbeat or three, though he managed not to moan.

"I'm bisexual. And I cannot believe I am admitting this, but I've been noticing you for…" he waved expansively. "Well, no need to get into embarrassing specifics. So, as it happens, you don't need Polyjuice. What you really need is…"

Harry refocused his eyes and locked on to Malf… Draco's. "Balls. I needed to grow some fucking balls."

Draco chuckled, blushed, broke away from Harry's eyes. "I have a set you could borrow. Or, well, 'share' would probably—"

His sentence ended in a squeak as Harry stood and swept him up. They were close in size but thanks to Auror training, and using daily exercise to deal with sexual frustration, Harry could easily bench press more than his own weight. "Come home with me," he growled. "We are apparently long past due for a serious talk. The kind that happens after several amazing shags."

Draco nodded, his eyes wide open, his smile sliding. His arms around Harry's neck. Harry Apparated them directly into his bedroom, his second-best robe abandoned on the back of his desk chair.

They stumbled upon arrival, and Harry nearly dropped his prize. Then Draco pushed against his chest and away, and Harry put the man down.

"Yeah?" Harry asked. He put out a hand to Draco, but it was ignored.

"I'm no damsel in distress, Potter." He stood there, facing half away, and fussed with his cuffs.

Harry felt himself flush hot and cold.

"I, of course not. And if you were, I wouldn't want you in my bedroom." _Levity will help_ , he prayed. "Queer as Dick's hatband, remember?" 

Draco looked at Harry for a long heartbeat. "I could use a drink," he finally said.

"Of course! Er… I don't keep a lot here, but I have an excellent ice gin…" he began backing toward the door.

"Any vodka?" Draco didn't move. He stood in the middle of Harry's bedroom floor as though he'd found a safe spot in a mine field. 

"Yes," Harry scratched under his ear. "But it's Muggle."

"All vodka is Muggle, Potter. And I'll take some with a bit of pumpkin juice, if you have…?"

"Yes!" Harry blurted, and banged his shoulder into his own doorjamb on his way out.

Harry stopped himself from humming three times while mixing the drinks. Off-key warbling was no one's successful seduction. 

When he spilled pumpkin juice on the tray he decided to transfer everything to clean glasses. The proper spells for potable spills didn't even enter his head until he'd done it all by hand.

Then he decided a trip to the loo (and more importantly, a moment with his toothbrush) was clearly in order.

When he got back to his bedroom, the door was closed. He opened it and was grateful to steady the tray before he spilled the drinks a second time. Draco was sitting up, in Harry's bed, naked from the waist up. He was leafing through Harry's latest copy of Magical Nation, which Harry always felt guilty for not reading more carefully. Hermione, of course, renewed his subscription every Christmas. 

Still, it surely made him look more worldly and sophisticated to Draco right now, and that was a good thing and _oh bloody hell did Draco just move his knee up and show me that he isn't wearing pants under that sheet?_

Harry put the tray on his bedside table and tried to give a sophisticated smile. "Read the article on the devaluation of the galleon against the pound yet? I thought... it... ... was…."

Draco was trailing a fingertip up Harry's hip, and he'd discovered that Harry's t-shirt wasn't tucked in. 

"I'd like you to call me Draco. May I call you Harry?" He was swirling a circle above Harry's hipbone. 

Harry swallowed once and gave a terse nod.

"Harry?" Harry felt fingernail, then skin.

Harry nodded again.

"Why aren't you in bed yet?"

Draco sipped at his drink while Harry stumbled out of his clothes. He didn't look at Draco again until he'd hidden most of his nudity under his sheet. Then he turned to see Draco holding out his glass. 

"I think you could use this." He smiled. The bed was large enough that they both had to reach toward the middle so Draco could pass Harry his glass.

Harry gulped down one large swallow, wincing from the unpleasant combination of juice, alcohol and minty toothpaste, before he put the vodka and pumpkin on the empty bedside table next to the wall. The one he'd only bought because the one he liked most came in a set. He stared at his hands, clasped unbelievably primly in his lap, and bit the bullet. "I have no fucking idea what to do now," he admitted.

"I thought as much." Draco took a last sip of his drink before putting it down and turning off the electric lamp. Now the room was lit only by the light from Harry's hallway. Draco slid down under the sheet and patted the center of the enormous bed.

They both shuffled toward the middle, and Harry blushed like a teenager as Draco reached for him. But kissing Draco turned out to feel natural and easy. His skin was smooth, and he didn't seem even remotely concerned about making noise. He was humming and panting and Harry was pretty sure that cooing might have been involved at some point. 

It was enough to release Harry from much of his long-standing insecurity about how Draco might perceive _him_. Soon he was pressing Draco into the bed, their legs entwined and erections rubbing together. They'd rolled over a few times and settled into the dent Harry'd made by always sleeping in the same spot on the left side of the mattress for a few years. 

"This is fantastic," Harry muttered as he pulled away from Draco's mouth in order to explore his neck.

"Why did we wait so damn long?" Draco agreed, then he grabbed his wand as he turned to allow Harry freer access to his neck. 

" _Accio_ lubricant!" he called, and as the lube shot from a drawer into Draco's outstretched hand, Harry felt an oddly brief but familiar squeeze, then wondered how he'd gotten cold.

"Harry? Did you just… Apparate to the other side of the bed?"

Harry looked across the empty sheets. "Apparently." He sat up. Draco turned from his back onto his side.

"Well. That's a first for me. What's the matter?" 

"It's all a first for me," Harry muttered, grumpy and almost silent. Then he forced himself to make eye contact. "I… I think I know." He fretted. "Are you… experienced?"

"Are you Jimi Hendrix?" Draco shook his head and grinned. "Forget I said that. Stupid joke. Yes, I am, Harry." His expression changed suddenly, as though he'd thought about the question. "Is that… all right with you?"

"I was kind of hoping you were as, you know, that you were new at this too. With men."

"I was once, and I promise, it's better this way, that one of us has some experience."

"Well how much _experience_ do you have, anyway?"

"Are you… jealous?" Draco smiled and traced a figure eight on the sheet near his chest.

Harry did not want to interpret that smile. So he got annoyed instead.

"Damn right I am!"

"And scared enough to Apparate away when I try to—"

"I never said I made sense, you know. I just said I wanted you."

"Which doesn't make sense?"

"Oh shut up," he growled, smiling. He rolled to his hands and knees and, moving across the middle of his bed, straddled Draco and pressed him onto his back again. 

"That's very exciting, did you know?" Draco's eyes were shiny. His smile was kissable, and his hands were on Harry's ribs. 

"What is?" He stroked Draco's side, carefully, wondering if he might be looking for a particular reaction.

"Your lack of experience. And this aggressiveness. It's an arousing combination, especially in you." He found the lube without looking away from Harry's face. "Now, will you let me apply this?"

"Shouldn't I do it?"

Draco smiled. "You want to stretch me? Be gentle please, but I'd enjoy that."

"You were planning to take _me_?" 

"Harry," he bent an elbow and leaned up on it, looking into Harry's eyes. "I wouldn't make you bottom. It's your first time."

"But I assumed you would…"

"Well that's your problem, isn't it?" He sounded pissy now. "You always assume you know what I want, you don't ask." 

Harry lay down again, facing Draco. The scrape of his stubble against the pillowcase hurt his ears and he closed his eyes.

He wanted to angrily deny what Draco accused him of, but he wanted to fuck him a great deal more. Not to mention… he thought about the last few months. Draco was probably right.

He looked Draco in the eyes and smiled, though he was sure his nervousness shone through. "I think you've just hit on the very core of why we've 'waited so damn long,' Draco. That and how uncomfortable I've been." He swallowed and looked at the ceiling. "Like I told you, I realized I was gay by figuring out I fancied you. So I haven't known long, I had no interest in asking anyone else out and I didn't want to ask _you_. I think it felt like if you said no…"

"You'd never get laid, ever?" 

Harry wasn't looking, but he could _hear_ the smile in Draco's voice.

"Yep."

"Weellll," and then Draco was on an elbow, leaning over him, tracing the line of his jaw with a fingertip, "I've no interest in rejecting you, I don't want you to bottom, and I am naked and hard—" he pressed his erection into Harry's hip "—in your bed."

Draco then followed the path his fingertip had taken with the tip of his tongue. His next question was whispered. "Want to shag?"

Harry growled his 'yes.'

****

Sex with a man was a learning experience.

**Stretch Draco without going too slow...**

"Are you sure I won't hurt you? I'm scared to hurt you!"

"I _said_ it wouldn't hurt, dammit, so put in a third finger. Now!"

**... or too fast.**

" _Ouch!_ I didn't say I needed a fourth finger."

"I'm really sorry Draco, I…"

"Shut up, dear boy." 

Draco's smile had already returned. Perhaps Harry hadn't done any permanent damage? 

"Your cock is lovely but it isn't _that_ big. So let's just lube you up and have you fuck me. Now?"

**Keep your wand and his nearby at all times or get lube all over the damn place.**

"Did you just say… 'squoosh'?"

"I didn't, but I think, yes, look at that. Your elbow sort of did."

"That is, wow, that's really gross."

"Just _Scourgify_ it away. You'll get used to doing that a few times during sex."

"How the hell do Muggle men deal with these issues?"

"I neither know, nor care. _Scourgify_. Now weren't we…? Oh, oh yes. Yes!"

**Anal sex required a different angle than vaginal sex, so Draco had to lean back a bit when he was on top...**

"You're _much_ too far away. Get closer. I want to kiss you."

"Then you need to sit up, or I have to be on the bottom."

"Let's try, ungh, yeah, help me sit… ok. Mmm. Mmm, this is working. Love the feel of your beard against my lips. You like that? On your throat? On your jaw?"

"I… oh, I do but…"

"Yeah, what if I hold onto your firm, round arse? Full of my cock… _fuck_!"

"S'good, s'real good but…" Draco rested his head on Harry's shoulder. "S'exhausting, too."

**… or be bent practically in half when he was underneath.**

"Damn, this works, this works great for me. But are you _sure_ I'm not hurting you? You're bent like a, a… like a pretzel here!"

"Harry, _dammit_ , if you ask me that _one more time…"_

**And remember to caress your lover's cock while you fuck him.**

"Touch me. Fucking hell, touch me!"

"Where? I'm doing nothing but touch you. _Ungh_ … inside and out. I've dreamed of this…"

"Me too, but it involved a lot more of my _cock_ when I did!"

"Oh! Of course! Like this? Wait, no… like this?"

"Yes, oh shit. Exactly like that…"

*****

"I think," Harry huffed as he collapsed on the tangled sheets, "it's going to take me a lot of practice to get this just right."

"Lucky for you, Harry," Draco murmured as he crept close and threw a sweaty arm across Harry's damp chest, "I'm more than willing to help you with that."

Harry turned to Draco with his only sly smile. "I'm just glad you didn't blow my bollocks off when I tried." He was rewarded with laughter that reverberated though his whole chest.

_finis_

 

* Ernest Trova is a sculptor: http://etrova.org/artwork/1404562_Study_Falling_Man.html


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